Page 25 of Oops I Fell For The Cowboy Next Door

"What?"

"Not today. Not tomorrow. But eventually. Marry me. Live on this land. Let me build you a proper house with insulation that works and windows that don't draft. Let me wake up next to you every morning and drink your terrible milk coffee."

"My coffee isn't terrible."

"Piper."

"Yes." She kisses me. "Yes. Eventually. Yes."

I pick her up. She wraps her legs around my waist, and I carry her down the hallway to the bedroom for the second time. Set her on the bed. Pull the flannel over her head. She pulls my shirt off. My jeans. Hers. Until there's nothing between us.

We move together slowly this time. My body over hers, her legs locked around my hips, my forehead pressed to hers. Every thrust is deliberate, deep, unhurried. Her nails dig into my shoulders. My hand cradles the back of her skull. She gasps my name, once, twice, and I swallow the sound with my mouth.

"You're mine." I press the words against her throat. Her jaw. Her lips. "You're mine, and I'm yours, and nothing changes that."

"Nothing," she breathes.

We come together. Her back arching, my arms shaking, both of us breaking in the way that makes you whole. I hold her through the aftershocks, my face buried in her neck, her fingers gentle in my hair.

After, we lie tangled in the sheets. Morning sun through the window, casting gold across the bed. Her head on my chest, her finger tracing the scar on my ribs, the way she always does.

"Tate?"

"Yeah?"

"You're gonna have to install that space heater. I can't feel my feet."

The laugh comes up from somewhere deep. Real. Full. The first sound in twelve years that feels like it belongs to a man who's alive instead of a man who's just surviving.

Her cabin. My land. Our creek. The fence line between us that turned out to be exactly where it was supposed to be.

Some things you never plan for.

Those are always the ones worth keeping.

EPILOGUE

PIPER

TWO YEARS LATER

The new house sits where the fence line used to be.

Tate built it himself. Took him eight months, working between ranch chores, with Jace helping on weekends and a crew from town that showed up uninvited after Maggie spread the word. Timber and stone, two stories, a wraparound porch that faces the mountains on one side and the creek on the other. Windows that actually seal. Insulation that actually works. A kitchen big enough for two people who both have opinions about counter space.

He tore down the old fence. Every post, every wire, every rusted staple. The property line is still there on paper, filed at the county office, but on the ground there's nothing separating his land from what used to be mine. The cattle roam through. The creek runs free. And the gap we used to climb through to get to each other is just grass now, worn to a path by boots that walk it every day.

My old cabin is still standing. He insulated it, replaced the windows, fixed the furnace. It's my office now. The second bedroom where I used to set up my laptop is a proper studio with a drafting table, a monitor, shelving for supplies. My business has tripled since I moved here. Turns out a graphic designer in Montana with a portfolio full of brewery logos and a mailing address in Grizzly Ridge is exactly the kind of story that generates referrals.

The wedding was in June. Small. His porch. Maggie catered. Hilda brought champagne and cried into a handkerchief she claimed was for allergies. Jace was best man. My mother flew in from Portland and spent the entire ceremony holding Tate's mother's hand while both of them sobbed. Sawyer McKenna, the county sheriff, showed up because apparently Tate fixed his truck once ten years ago, and the McKennas don't forget debts.

I wore a white dress. Bare feet. My grandmother's ring on my right thumb.

Tate wore clean jeans. A white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. He cried when I walked across the porch toward him, one hand pressed over his mouth, those hazel eyes burning gold in the afternoon light. The man who wouldn't shake my hand the day I arrived stood there shaking while I said I do.

That was four months ago. It's October now. The cottonwoods along the creek are full gold, and the air has that bite to it that means winter is coming, and I'm sitting on our bathroom floor at five in the morning holding a pregnancy test.

Two lines.